Seventeen and Insane-(Clarisse McClellan OneShot)
by lTigerMoonl
Summary: Just a small school project that I really enjoyed writing. A friend and I switched of every paragraph or so and this was the end result. It is a one shot, as the title says. Hope you enjoy this quick read!


**Disclaimer: I do not own anything.**

Clarisse McClellan

"Hey Clarisse," my dead friend said to me. Wait, dead friend, yes. Eleanor had been run over by a speeding car last year. Why would I be seeing dead people? Then I realized the faint fog in the corner of my eye. It was a dream.

My uncle came into my room to wake me. Every beautiful morning my uncle wakes me up at 8:00, every grey and smoggy morning he wakes me up at 7:00. I lie in the grass and wait for the smog to lift. It was 7. It was always 7.

Today it was smoggy. The air was thick and clogged my nose, but that was just part of the fun. Feeling the choking smog, that covered the city on 7:00 days, lift. Feeling my nose and eyes and every part of my body cleanse as the smog lifted and the sky turned blue. My friends, dead friends, had always laughed at me, but I ignored them. Rituals, like this one, were far too important to ignore.

By about 8:00 the cars started to show up. When I was little I used to watch the cars and count them. Now they went to fast to count.

I never spent much time on the front lawn, and even if I did I never ventured from it. Outside reminded me of how bad the world was and all the friends I had lost. I was fine at making friends, I was just not good at keeping them. Most of my friends had died in that car crash. In the last town Eleanor had been killed by a crash when her mother went 70 mph on the freeway.

My father and uncle had made me promise that I would never get into a car. Not even if they were the ones driving it. I hate to break promises, but how I yearn to feel the leather of the seats, to honk the horn, even to see the 200 ft. long billboards rush by me.

They owned a car, they didn't want me to know that, but I knew. My dad would park it a block away and then walk to it so it appeared as if he was walking to the subway. I knew the subway only went to Lynn St. and his work was at Cross Ave.

I have to go to school, at least sometimes, most of the time my uncle tutors me. School costs too much. People who don't want to be taught by the parlor have to pay a lot of money (that we don't have) to go to school. My uncle was a professor of literature before he lost his job though.

He keeps books, that's how he teaches me. I love to feel the pages, to absorb the texture. Not the literal texture, the life of the author, the feeling of spring when the flowers blossom. I have a small garden in the back of the house. It is lovely.

My garden is my safe place. It is the only place where no one will bother me. Sitting there as peaceful as a lamb, only touched by my hands. I have always had a green thumb. It sprouted one summer day.

"Clarisse, are you finished day dreaming?" my uncle calls down the hall. When I finally come out he is making breakfast, pancakes already precariously piled on a plate. My father is discussing a poem with him. "Did you dream anything interesting?" my uncle always asks about my thoughts and dreams.

"Nothing particular, just thinking about my garden," I reply.

I rush down the back steps ready to go to "school". Lessons are always outside. Always in the main garden, never mine. My uncle is sitting in the big chair; I sit on my little wooden stool. It is time for lessons.

I begin to recite the Caunterbury Tales. Reciting 42 lines wasn't the hard part, nor was the Middle English pronunciation. The hard part was analyzing the poem. My mind always wandered. That was what made me strange. My uncle never let me read farther than 42 lines, he says it's inappropriate, but I'm 17.

My uncle said that memorization is the key to good learning, and that good learning is the key to a good life. I think he's right. I feel complete when I recite, when I learn.

He pulls out a book. It's my favorite. Alice in Wonderland, I relate to Alice in so many ways. We are both so odd and different. I even sewed myself a white rabbit. He even has a little top hat and suit.

That night I turn uneasily in my bed. Dreams of fire and pages engulf me. I cry out once in the dark and my uncle comes to me. "Don't worry, I'm here," he murmurs in my ear. "More nightmares?"

"The worst sort," I whisper back, "the kind you're not sure whether you'll wake up or not."

I went back to sleep; I knew the dreams couldn't get any worse. But they did. I was standing in the middle of the flames, my favorite book burning around me. Then I heard them, thousands of people screaming for their books, yelling and pulling at the bars that separated them from me.

"Clarisse," my uncle roughly shakes me awake, "is there any way that the fireman you talked to could have figured out we have books?"

"No," I answer, Montag won't do that, and besides he only knew she was odd.

"Well someone has sounded the alarm on us. The firemen will be here soon. We need to leave," my uncle tells me as I hear the sirens.

"I'm staying," I say stoically. I stand from the bed and grab Alice in Wonderland from the bedside table. "Take it with you, Uncle," I make him promise. He and my father leave quickly through the alley.

I don't cry. I take a match from the drawer by the stove, I am ready to die for the books. I am ready to die for knowledge.

The sirens stop and they are here. I hear my uncle scream and I cling to a book. I can't believe it; I don't want to believe it. Who could have done it, the traitor.

I slide under my bed as the firemen come into my room, they spray everything with kerosene and leave. I pull out my match. I yell as I strike the match.

"Seventeen and insane!"

 _ **Much thanks to my friend who wrote this with me, and to my teacher who gave us this great project.**_


End file.
